I mulled over a lot of different options but here is my latest version of a higher end gaming oriented rig:
Mid-Tower case (4 fans)
750W Thermaltake PS
Core 2 Duo E6850 (3Ghz)
eVGA 680i A1 motherboard
4x1GB PC-6400 DDR2 800 system memory
2x MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E HD OC (610Mhz GPU, 2000Mhz mem)
HannsG 28" widescreen LCD, 1920x1200, 3ms
74GB WD Raptor 10,0000 rpm HD
500 GB WD 7200 rpm HD
LiteOn LH-20A1L 20X Double Layer DVD+-RW Lightscribe, SATA
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers
Vista Home Premium 64bit
After tax, shipping, keyboard, mouse I'm targeting a final bill of about $3400. In the course of my pondering, I rejected the following upgrades:
1) 2x2GB memory - it seems like that would cost me an extra $100 or more. The adoption of 64bit OSes seems quite slow, so by the time I think the market begins really supporting apps that need more than 4GB (2 years from now?), memory costs will come down and I can toss the 4x1GB modules and get a 2x2GB for $100.
2) DDR2 1066 Mhz system memory. Seems like that upgrade would cost about $200. And I'd estimate system performance would increase by only 2-3%.
3) SSDs. I really wanted this one, but a RAID 0 2x32GB set of disks would have set me back over a grand.
The only real big budget item for this system is the 2nd graphics card, although the speakers, monitor and HD subsystem are all a bit beefer than average. But after all this is a gaming oriented system. What'ya think?
Mid-Tower case (4 fans)
750W Thermaltake PS
Core 2 Duo E6850 (3Ghz)
eVGA 680i A1 motherboard
4x1GB PC-6400 DDR2 800 system memory
2x MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E HD OC (610Mhz GPU, 2000Mhz mem)
HannsG 28" widescreen LCD, 1920x1200, 3ms
74GB WD Raptor 10,0000 rpm HD
500 GB WD 7200 rpm HD
LiteOn LH-20A1L 20X Double Layer DVD+-RW Lightscribe, SATA
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers
Vista Home Premium 64bit
After tax, shipping, keyboard, mouse I'm targeting a final bill of about $3400. In the course of my pondering, I rejected the following upgrades:
1) 2x2GB memory - it seems like that would cost me an extra $100 or more. The adoption of 64bit OSes seems quite slow, so by the time I think the market begins really supporting apps that need more than 4GB (2 years from now?), memory costs will come down and I can toss the 4x1GB modules and get a 2x2GB for $100.
2) DDR2 1066 Mhz system memory. Seems like that upgrade would cost about $200. And I'd estimate system performance would increase by only 2-3%.
3) SSDs. I really wanted this one, but a RAID 0 2x32GB set of disks would have set me back over a grand.
The only real big budget item for this system is the 2nd graphics card, although the speakers, monitor and HD subsystem are all a bit beefer than average. But after all this is a gaming oriented system. What'ya think?